Where I Rest My Head
by yellowcottondresses
Summary: Will didn't go to die that night at the train yard. Not that he would have minded getting swept under the rails, but that's not the reason why he stood on those tracks. He did it because ever since the Festival, maybe even since the first time he saw Brent in that club, he couldn't keep telling himself this didn't feel real. ONESHOT.


**Author's Note: I utterly lack at this thing people call "plot". Which is why this has none. It was just a string of pretty-sounding sentences that wouldn't stop until I'd written almost 3000 words. I feel like I need to start adding a standard disclaimer that I neither wanted to nor asked to be dragged into this Brent&Will-writing obsession/borderline Total Situation, but the episodes have become about 93% more painful because of it. Is it January 15****th**** already? **

**Set a few weeks ahead of current timeline. **

**I don't own Nashville, or anything affiliated. **

"**No matter where I sleep/ you are haunting me/ But I'm already there/ I'm already there/ Wherever there is you/ I will be there, too"**

"**Silhouettes", Of Monsters & Men**

**I.**

Before they fell asleep, Brent wrapped his arm around Will's waist. It was like he was trying to hold him still, keep him steady, even in his dreams – which was stupid, because Will hadn't dreamed in years, good, bad, or otherwise.

At least, that's what he told himself.

And Will couldn't move. He could barely breathe, feeling the weight of Brent draped across him like that; the arm resting on his body, the fingers that reached for his own before they settled on his waist. If Brent had taken Will's hand – if Will reached out through the bare inches and long night between them to take it – they would have almost matched up, palm for palm.

It's strange to Will, having someone else's hands feeling that way in his. With girls – with Layla – he's used to being able to wrap his entire fist around theirs, feeling like a giant as he takes hold of their slender fingers. But with Brent, if you put their hands together, they're almost the same length. And when they grip together it's like someone is hanging onto _him_, instead of the other way around.

For once, Will doesn't feel like he's covering someone entirely, smothering or crushing their tiny features in his larger, calloused palms. With Brent, it's –

(it feels like someone is actually reaching _for_ him. Like someone is trying to tether him to something real.)

A secret: sometimes, he thought – before he made himself stop thinking – that it was good to feel that reach. To feel covered.

It was Brent's reminder that Will on his side of the mattress. Will's reminder that he was _on _a side of the mattress to begin with – that it was a place he could call his, sleeping beside him.

That arm draped across him like a burden or a promise, those hands reaching but never touching; it's a solid way to remind the both of them that they were here, they were together; and even with a history as tangled as their bodies had been a few hours ago, they let it happen again.

_Will _let it happen again.

(A place to call his. Sleeping beside him.)

And before he fell asleep, he was more aware of this fact than anything else.

Except –

the warm weight of Brent's arm. Resting on his waist, reaching for his hand even in sleep.

Will could have taken it. But he kept his hands tucked up underneath him.

Even though it was Brent's way of trying to keep him here. Even though Will maybe wanted to. Even though Will definitely wanted to.

Even though they had a long history of leaving.

(Brent was scared shitless he'd disappear again. And at this point, Will couldn't have said which option made him more afraid – leaving, or actually being the one who stayed.)

**II.**

This postwar quiet is temporary as the hour – when they wake up, everything Will never wants (and wishes he never wants) will wake with him. He'll leave his side of the bed cold long before Brent rolls out to shower and wipe his face free of any hint of what they did, when the rest of the world assumed Will was with Layla, alone in her hotel room one floor down.

Will always gives the excuse that his insomnia will keep her awake.

When they show up at the arena tomorrow afternoon for soundcheck, wardrobe, meet-and-greet, and bad catering backstage, they'll avoid each other. Give polite smiles and nods when necessary, because it's all part of the job. Brent will watch him act out his little pantomime with Layla, putting his arm around her slim waist and molding her to his side, bending down to meet her for a kiss. And when Will goes onstage the middle of her show so they can sing her new duet, he'll smile at Layla and look into her eyes and the crowd will completely eat it up.

Afterward, it goes like this:

Brent will go upstairs first. At least two hours, is how long Will makes himself wait. Usually at the hotel bar. A couple of beers, always a shot or two of whiskey. Makes things…not easier to deal with, just less sharp around the edges.

Two hours' time to make sure that nobody is watching him, nobody makes the connection between this floor and the fact that Will's room isn't on this particular level. He'll knock twice, and Brent will open the door, but stand behind it so that nobody passing by would notice the shape of another man inside. And when Will walks into the room, when they've both counted to ten and made sure that there are no footsteps coming from the other side of the door, only then can Will approach Brent.

And even then, it's with one of two expressions – one of either grim resolve, or one of surprise, as if after all the times they ended up this way since the Music City Music Festival, Will still has no fucking clue how he managed to end up here. Again.

(Will couldn't tell you if either of those feel like lies anymore.)

Six weeks now, this has been going on. From Nashville to Tallahassee, then Jacksonville, then Fort Lauderdale and Miami; now they're working their way through Chicago, Tulsa, Kansas City, Baton Rouge; Omaha and Santa Fe.

Six weeks, and that's how long it took them both to do just this –

To sleep.

Will couldn't, of course – he never did much sleeping these days. Instead he lay awake for hours, staring at the hotel ceiling and watching the fan above them lazily whirl. It cut drunken shadows that stumbled across the blank white walls, the nondescript carpet, the tangled sheets of the bed and their bare skin. He watched the fan until it made him dizzy, then looked across the room as shadowy silver knives swatches of the midnight, breaking the darkness around him, damning as any spotlight.

Every time he closed his eyes, he couldn't relax. Instead of drifting off, it made him hyperaware of everything around him, like the room had a pulse and he could feel it beating through his own body. His heart thudded in his ears, the whoosh of an entire ocean, and his head ached along with every rapidfire beat.

He took to counting the seconds between Brent's steady breaths, which were the kind of long, slow ones that only came with deep sleep. Sometimes, it was so long between them that Will wondered if he was even breathing at all, but of course he was – he could feel that, too, the warmth of it against his shoulder and the slight fluted sound that occasionally escaped Brent's lips when he shifted beside Will. Every motion he registered, because he couldn't _not_ feel it.

It didn't help him calm down, though. His heart was beating too hard, too fast, and it sometimes left him gasping, like he'd almost drowned in the darkness. He'd sit bolt-straight up in bed, sweat trailing down his bare back and pooling at the base of his spine, then run his shaking hands through his hair, skin clammy and covered in goosebumps. He couldn't tune anything out, no matter how many times he shut his eyes and turned over in bed, facing the wall instead of Brent, like it might help him forget.

But he didn't forget. He could never forget.

Just like he could never rest. It didn't feel like he'd ever be able to; never felt like it was something he was _allowed_.

He'd been exhausted ever since the Festival ended, rolling out of town with the whistle of the train still in his ears and the conductor's light the only thing he saw whenever he closed his eyes. His entire body ached, a hurt eating him away from the inside out. Every night he went to his room after another sold-out show, and even with more whiskey than blood in his veins that raw ache was the only thing he felt.

So he'd just lie there, wide awake. The hours passing by became meaningless; night turned into which turned into night which turned into another day on the road, then the arena, then another night in an empty dark room, and he stared at the ceiling. At first he'd wonder what came next, then he'd do anything in his power _not_ to, and found that to be much harder.

Then he'd started ending up in those fancy, faceless rooms with Brent, with only the shadows and recesses of his mind and memory to catch him. No fathers or fake girlfriends or former best friends; nobody who knew the _other_ Will Lexington.

But even then, he couldn't close his eyes. There was no rest, no peace, no way to escape.

A secret: He still hung on to the dream of killing it as a country star. But some nights – especially lately – he had another one in the back of his mind.

Dreams of never needing a dream again. Dreams of falling asleep and never having to open his eyes to the mess he'd managed to make of his life, where he failed at the only thing ever tried to do and needed to do above everything else. Dreams of being able to escape it all forever, of it all being _over_ once and for all; of closing his eyes and never waking up.

**III.**

He'd gotten worse and worse at…what is it he's doing, these days?

"You look awful," Layla had told him bluntly, just the other night. "When was the last time you slept?"

"Did you just roll out of a dumpster?" Juliette said, a few days ago. "We got a show in an hour; get your shit together."

"You look like roadkill," his manager, Corinne, told him last night as he'd finished getting ready for the pre-show meet-and-greet. "You'll scare fans away if you go out there looking like that."

Even Glenn had pulled him aside. Said that Will seemed off his game lately, not 100%, and that he was still churning out fantastic show after show after show every night, his performance was never an issue, but you know how it was, first-time musician, first big tour, if you're not taking great care of yourself it can really wreck your body. And it didn't matter what Jeff or Juliette said, Glenn and Corinne and a whole lot of other people cared more about Will being healthy than anything else, and if he needed a few days off from the tour, just a little time to recoup, maybe just one or two nights, they'd be okay with that, nobody would be mad at him; they understood how it was for newbies.

Which Will had refused, of course. The tour wasn't the problem. Right now, the tour was the_ solution_.

Because without it, really, what did he have?

**IV.**

These days, he passes through cities now like he used to go through girls back in Nashville, when he followed all the rules for what he was supposed to do and was surprised to find it easy.

Funny how that switched. He never remembered their names when he took them to bed. And now, it's the only thing he _can_ remember.

More so than the churn of the wheels under the tour bus, the beat and melody of his same set of four songs night after night after night, the scream and cheer of the crowds of people he'll never know.

**V.**

A big secret: None of that…it didn't come close to anything like what it felt like to lie in the dark with Brent.

A bigger secret: Even if it never gave him a moment's peace. Because ever since the Festival – shit, maybe even since the first time he saw Brent in that club, months and too many decisions ago – he couldn't tell his stupid, fucked-up, defective head what he always told his stupid, fucked-up, defective head. He was getting worse at telling himself that this wasn't real.

**VI.**

The biggest secret: Hell, it's the _only_ damn thing that feels real anymore.

**VII.**

A secret: He didn't go there to die that night at the train yard. Not that he would have minded getting swept under the rails, but that's not the reason why he stood on those tracks.

He went there for, weirdly enough, the same reason that he's here right now, sleeping in this anonymous hotel room, off a busy interstate in some city whose name he didn't and won't remember. He ended up here in this bed and there on those tracks, staring down the cold black steel, because he was tired. Too tired to keep this up anymore; too tired to look back in the lock box of his memory and pick out a reason as to exactly WHY he needed to keep this up.

Most of all, he was too tired to care that he was too tired.

And whenever Will got too tired to fight what was eating him from the inside out, he needed to remind himself that, contrary to what his screwed-up brain was telling him, he wasn't actually dead. Numb, definitely, and broken and empty and completely fucked-up inside, but still. The train always proved to Will that he was, above everything else, _alive._

It was the only way he ever made himself feel like he was more afraid of dying than he was of living. Even if everything inside him felt like he'd been dead longer than he'd ever been alive.

**VIII.**

On the other side of the bed, Brent shifted.

Will peered over at him. He held his breath, trying not to wake him, and after a moment it seemed like Brent had fallen back asleep.

Except he didn't, and his eyes flickered behind closed lids a few times before he opened them, a fuzzy bluegrey that took a moment to focus on Will's.

"What're you doin' up." Brent's voice was heavy as the sky from sleep, and the only thing in the room. It took over the silence and the shadows, seemed to anchor the darkness as much as shake it.

Before that, it had been so quiet, in this nameless little room. Like there had just been a war.

Brent shifted again under the covers, curling closer to Will, and before Will really knew what he was doing (or wanted to do) he was moving closer to him, too. Their legs brushed up against each other under the covers; their faces were almost touching. The shadow unfurled against Brent's bare shoulders like a flag being waved in surrender.

"Go't sleep," Brent mumbled.

His grip on Will tightened, and by the time he breathed in and then out again against Will's chest, he was already gone.

Will closed his eyes. Felt his heartbeat in his ears. Felt Brent, breathing steady against him. Felt the fan blow cool air over him, the shadows once again sweeping the room, circling again and again and again.

This is how Will fell asleep. His eyes closed, his body turned towards Brent's, his heart in his throat and Brent's arm still draped across his waist.

It happened softly, not with a crash or a bang or even a whimper. All it took was Will closing his eyes. And before he thought about (or let himself think about) the whys and reasons why not, he wasn't thinking about anything anymore

**IX.**

When he wakes up, it's to the sound of the shower running and a cup of coffee from the downstairs lobby Starbucks. Straight-up black coffee, just how he likes it.

His phone says it's almost six AM, which means he needs to get back to his own room. It also means that he might have slept two hours or two minutes or maybe even half the night –

It also means that he _slept_.

He's dressed before Brent's done in the shower, texting "thanks for the coffee" as he gathers his things. His hat is on the desk by the window. He can't remember how it got there –

(or maybe he's just made sure he's forgotten.)

Sunlight is starting to trickle in through the slit where the heavy curtains separate. With all the time he spends now on planes and busses, dark hotels and dark bars and glowing indoor arenas, daylight hours have ceased to mean anything conventional. Will's starting to forget that there are other looks to the day other than the silver of a cold dawn; the bloody streaks of twilight; the pure and endless blue of the sky you only reach when you're above the clouds. He's half-tempted to open the curtains and look out the window, take a peek at a city streaked with the golden-brown haze of an early morning, but he knows better, so he doesn't.

Instead, he leaves.

**X.**

He checks out the peephole to make sure the coast is clear. His footsteps thud dully on the redbrown carpet as he creeps towards the middle of the hallway. The elevator is too slow; he peers over his shoulder, to make sure no one else is waiting. Watching. Seeing him leave.

He's lost track of how many times it's been, this time.

It's a lot easier – necessary, required, _surviving_ – not to count.


End file.
